39. Don’t you know that lovers shouldn’t make you cry?
39
Don’t you know that lovers shouldn’t make you cry?
Moth
A melia tried to insist on staying with me. I put a stop to that right away. Tommy going to work wasn’t anything to be worried about, and certainly, nothing to stop her from going on what was possibly one of the last date nights she and Carl could have for years to come.
Children, after all, took up a lot of time—and even more space, I was learning.
In the nursery, I was having trouble organizing everything. I had multiple totes of clothes, all washed, tags removed, and ready to be folded.
Except I had already filled up both dressers.
I stood in the middle of the dimly lit room, my hands on my hips as I looked down at another half-filled tote, a sigh slipping from between my lips.
Maybe Amelia had been right. I had overdone it .
“Well,” I said, looking at the open closet doors. “I guess it’s better to have too much than not enough.”
My mom had always said that.
Fuck, I missed her.
Why so much now than ever before?
A hard kick to the belly reminded me, and I snorted, reaching down to place a hand across my stretched skin.
Oh yeah, that was why.
I had just bent to grab the tote when the sun streaming in the window caught my eye. It was slowly sinking beneath the horizon, kissing the tops of the tufted grass that waved in the abandoned horse pasture.
Was it really that late already?
Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out my phone and the minute it lit up in my face, I frowned.
It was 5:30.
I quickly opened my texts, and when I did, my heart fell into the pit of my gut. Tommy hadn’t said a single thing to me all day. This wasn’t normal, terrible fire or not.
What if Amelia was right? What if something was wrong?
The thoughts stopped when I heard a loud knock on the door from downstairs, and Duke, lying in the doorway, perked up, looking down the stairs, and then over at me.
That was the answer to that, then.
Tommy had been working hard all day and had forgotten his keys .
Tucking my phone back into my back pocket, I stepped out of the room, Duke scurrying ahead of me to get to the door before I could.
My first mistake was not looking before I opened the door.
I should have known better. I should have done better, but my hand fell to the knob, flipping the lock and yanking it open without a second thought.
When I looked outside, squinting through the howling wind and the curtain of white flakes that fell in front of my eyes, it didn’t even register. My brain was the stalled engine of an old, broken-down car, and no matter how many times I turned the key, it just wouldn’t start.
I barely had time to register a pair of green eyes looking in at me before he pulled back, his fist slamming into my nose so hard I stumbled back and hit the ground hard, a lightning bolt of pain slamming into my stomach and wrapping around to my spine.
I couldn’t see. My vision was clouded by darkness and rainbow-colored stars. My ears were ringing, my head swimming, and when I slowly began to float back into the real world, the first thing I heard was Duke’s booming barks.
Struggling, I rolled myself onto all fours and then to my feet, ignoring the screaming pain in my back and hips. I tossed myself into the living room just as I heard the sound of the door slamming closed and the lock clicking into place. My heart was racing, my thoughts empty and numb, and I focused on one singular goal—get my dad’s service pistol.
With a surge of adrenaline, I stumbled towards the coffee table, my body throbbing .
It wasn’t there.
Eyes wide, I searched the coffee table, the side table beside the couch, and even the floor.
The gun was gone.
My nose was throbbing, and I could feel the cold drip from my nostrils, telling me it was broken. I heard a scream of pain from behind me, and a cold chill rocketed up my spine.
“Call off the dog!” Barrett’s screaming voice echoed behind me, and I twisted, my fingers trembling. “Call him off, or I kill him.”
I could see Barrett standing in the foyer, a gun in his hand, and pointed straight at Duke, who had wrapped his iron jaws around his forearm with no intention of letting go. I watched as Duke pulled back, and with a single shake of his massive head, I heard Barrett’s forearm snap, and his pain erupted in an ear-splitting scream.
It wasn’t until I heard him cock the gun that time suddenly sped up until it seemed like someone had hit fast forward.
“No!” I screamed, my voice shaking. “Duke! Duke, release!”
He pulled away, jumping back as he had been taught, and released his target. He kept all four paws on the ground but now began the ceaseless barking, a single tone that echoed in the empty house. It was an alert— I’ve found someone, and he’s here.
Barrett stumbled back, the sleeve of his denim jacket quickly bleeding crimson in front of my eyes. The Stetson on his head was askew, hanging low in front of his eyes.
Duke went quiet and slowly dropped to the ground, lying against the bottom of the stairs, his black ears twitching as he waited for his next command. His lip lifted in a snarl .
He knew something was wrong.
Barrett stomped towards me, his green eyes flashing red like a wildfire in a pine forest, and I forced myself to look away—to look down—and that’s when I saw it.
The front of my grey yoga pants were stained red, trickling down my thighs and pooling around the fabric bunched across my knees. The air left my lungs in one low, shaking sob, and tears sprang to my eyes as I felt Barrett wrap his thick fingers around my wrist and pull me forward. I stumbled along after him, my thighs tacky and sticking together with every step.
My lungs were burning as he pulled me forward, stumbling and almost falling as he dragged me after him, pulling me into the kitchen and forcing me down hard on one of the wooden kitchen chairs.
Still, I couldn’t force my eyes away from the blood smearing across my thighs.
It happened when I fell. When he hit me, and I fell.
As I fought to suck in air that just wouldn’t come, my mind was focused on one single thought.
I was losing the baby.
“Who’s the father?” he asked, lowering himself down in a chair across from me. I forced myself to look up at him.
His cheeks were hollow, skeletally thin, and sunken beneath the dark skin around his green eyes. Once full of life, the forests of green that I had once found so calming were now dull and emotionless. His skin had a gross, grey pallor to it, not unlike corpses laid in their coffins. He hadn’t shaved in quite some time, and a shadow of patchy, wispy stubble dotted his jawline. He was a gaunt, cavernous shell of what he used to be, and I could see the madness in the darkest pits of his eyes.
I stayed quiet until he slammed his hand down on the table and I jumped, another pain rocketing through my core.
“I said,” he ground out. “Who’s the father?”
“Tommy,” I said, and he reached over and slapped me across the face, hard. I tasted blood.
“ Whore ,” he spat, looking at me with disgust. “You’ll spread your legs for just about anyone.”
“What do you want?” I asked, my voice shaking and breathy from the sob I barely held back.
“I just wanna talk,” he said. That’s when I noticed the gun. He still had the gun in his hand, but now he pointed it directly at my stomach.
“Where’s Tommy?” I said, my eyes flicking from the dark hole in the barrel to the dark hole in his eyes—a hole that drilled all the way back to his psyche.
“You don’t need to worry about him,” Barrett said with a shrug. “I took care of him. He’s dead.”
I felt the pain sinking into me, but not a pain that was physical. It had torn the heart from my chest, and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think, and all I could feel was emptiness.
As his words sank in, a wave of devastation crashed over me, pulling me under the surface until my throat burned and my lungs ached. It hit me like a sucker punch to the gut, leaving me breathless and shaking. The weight of emptiness settled in my chest, suffocating me .
Questions swirled in my mind, but Barrett’s cold gaze held me captive before I could voice them.
“Why?” I managed to choke out, my voice trembling with anger and sorrow.
Barrett’s nonchalant shrug ignited a fire within me. How could he be so callous?
“He touched what is mine,” he said, his words cutting through me like a knife.
As I stared into Barrett’s eyes, once filled with warmth and love, I saw only darkness and indifference. It felt as if someone had flipped a switch, turning him into a stranger.
I didn’t even know him anymore, but had I ever?
“What are you talking about?” I asked, my voice trembling. “You’re gay, you—”
“You can believe I lied about my entire identity, but not my sexual orientation ? Come on, Nessa. You’re a smart girl. You can figure it out, hmm?”
“That doesn’t make any sense!” I blurted, my eyes watering as another surge of pain shot through me. I wanted to jump up, to run to the phone or out the front door, but the cold, hard barrel pointed unwaveringly in my direction held me hostage. “We live in the south! Why would you lie about something to make your life harder ? All the bullies and the broken windows on your truck and—”
Another shrug, and fuck if it didn’t piss me off.
“Worth it.”
“Why?!”
“To get closer to you.”
I stopped, my hands shaking as I gripped the table’s edge, my eyes trying to find something in his—any semblance of humanity—but there was none. There was nothing there. It was like looking into the face of a wild animal.
“B-but,” I said, forcing the word past chattering teeth. “I read the police reports, and the interviews, and your father said—”
“My father was a hero,” he said, gritting his teeth as he glared at me. “A real hero, not a fake like Tommy or Carl.”
He spat their names like a bad taste in his mouth.
“He made it up to protect me. What was he supposed to tell them? The truth?” He snorted. “Sure, tell the cops ‘My son was so obsessed with her that he couldn’t sleep at night, so I snatched her to keep him happy.’ Yeah, that would have gone over really well when your father was the chief.”
I sat in stunned silence. It took a few minutes and lots of willpower to find my voice again.
“Did he know?” I said without a second thought. “Did he know what you planned to do?”
He snorted again, his free hand reaching into the pocket of his denim jacket and pulling out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and an old, battered white lighter. I could see his fingers shaking. He was using the hand holding the gun. The one Duke had bitten and broken was pressed against his chest, shaking. Even from across the table, I could see the bloodstain was still spreading.
“Of course he knew, Vanessa.”
“He knew you were going to rape me?”
He narrowed his eyes, and the way he looked at me was like I was a pile of garbage discarded on the sidewalk .
“You can’t rape the willing.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You never said no.”
I sat in stunned silence as I watched as he tapped one out and grabbed it between his teeth, tossing the pack onto the scarred, pitted table.
“I was drugged!”
He ignored me, striking the lighter and touching it to the end until it caught, and he pulled in a deep, shaking breath, and then another.
“Y-you c-can’t…” The words fell from between my lips before I could stop them, and it wasn’t until they left my mouth that I realized how ridiculous they sounded. “You can’t smoke. I’m pregnant.”
“For now,” he said, grabbing the smoke between his thumb and forefinger and releasing a shifting cloud of grey smoke right into my face. I coughed, the acrid scent burning my throat. “But that’s gonna change.”
Change? What the hell did that mean?
I stayed quiet, simply watching him, but I didn’t have to wait long for an answer. Clamping the cigarette between his teeth, he placed the gun down on the table between us and reached into his pocket once again. After a second of fumbling, he produced a long, serrated hunting knife.
“I’m gonna cut that abomination out of you, Vanessa.”